Valve working on game hardware

Game software firm Valve is hiring engineers to work on a secret hardware project that could mark the company's move into console gaming.

Game software firm Valve is hiring engineers to work on a secret hardware project that could mark the company's move into console gaming.

The company behind Half-Life, Portal and the Steam game network posted job listings for two hardware engineer positions, including an electronics engineering job. The aim is to conceive, design, evaluate and produce “new types of input, output, and platform hardware” designed to produce "whole new gaming experiences."

Exactly what kind of hardware this might be is unclear, but there were previous rumours that the company was planning a games console called the Steam Box, which was speculated to include customisable controllers and biometrics, making it a potentially unique contender to Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony.

Valve denied it was working on a console last month, but that does not mean it does not intend to start working on one now or in the near future.

Of course, even if it is planning to produce a console there are no guarantees that it will come to fruition, particularly as the market already has some tough competition from big companies with a lot of money at their disposal.

If Valve's secret project is not a console, it only adds further mystery to the job positions and what it has planned up its sleeves for the hardware market.

Valve's Michael Abrash reveals that he is working on wearable gaming devices and here's a small extract from his mighty long blog post:

By “wearable computing” I mean mobile computing where both computer-generated graphics and the real world are seamlessly overlaid in your view; there is no separate display that you hold in your hands (think Terminator vision). The underlying trend as we’ve gone from desktops through laptops and notebooks to tablets is one of having computing available in more places, more of the time. The logical endpoint is computing everywhere, all the time – that is, wearable computing – and I have no doubt that 20 years from now that will be standard, probably through glasses or contacts, but for all I know through some kind of more direct neural connection. And I’m pretty confident that platform shift will happen a lot sooner than 20 years – almost certainly within 10, but quite likely as little as 3-5, because the key areas – input, processing/power/size, and output – that need to evolve to enable wearable computing are shaping up nicely, although there’s a lot still to be figured out.

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